• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, December 3, 2024

 After piloting the Aira app in stores in Florida, Georgia and California last month, Walmart is now offering the on-demand service in all U.S. stores.

The retail giant joins companies like Target, Meijer, Wegman’s, Starbucks and Gucci, offering the service for free for blind and low-vision shoppers.

Users download the app and can open it anytime to instantly connect to a professional visual interpreter. That interpreter then assists with navigating the store, helping the shopper look for deals, place or retrieve an online order, or find the shortest line.

The feature for visibility-impaired is Walmart’s latest effort to make stores more welcoming to people with disabilities.

Since last year, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer has introduced several new programs, writes Gayatri Agnew, head of Walmart’s Accessibility Center of Excellence, in a blog announcing the Aira launch. Those include sensory-friendly shopping hours in all stores, with quieter adjustments between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. (TV screens go static, radios are turned off, and lights are dimmed, making a calmer shopping environment for people with autism, ADHD and other sensory issues.)

The retailer has also expanded the range of adaptive products it offers. And like other companies, Walmart provides Caroline’s Carts, shopping carts equipped with seats for children and adults with special needs.

“The reality is, we have tons of shoppers with disabilities who we want to make sure are having as good, if not better, of a shopping experience with us as someone who doesn’t have a disability,” Agnew says.

Aira has plans with B2B partners like Walmart, but it also offers consumer plans, a spokesperson for the app says. "As there is a 70% unemployment rate in the community, Aira subsidizes a large portion of the cost of the service for consumers," he tells Marketing Daily via email. "Plans begin at $26 for twenty minutes of services for qualified consumers."

The American Foundation for the Blind reports that 50 million American adults have some degree of vision loss. Of these, almost 4 million have a great deal of trouble seeing, even when wearing glasses. And 340,000 can’t see at all.